The Woman in Suite 11

Like Lo, Carrie appears in both The Woman in Cabin 10 and The Woman in Suite 11. In both books, she’s the titular woman. On the Aurora, Carrie was an antagonist who became an ally. Lo describes Carrie as “The woman who had hit me, and locked me up, and almost left me to die. But she was also the woman who had fought for me, lied for me, and ultimately saved my life at great cost to her own” (81). After escaping the Aurora, committing murder, and stealing a new identity, Carrie enters an abusive relationship with Marcus.

When Lo sees Carrie for the first time in 10 years, she notes how Carrie is thin but looks wealthy. Her hair color, nails, and clothes look expensive, and she appears to have had plastic surgery. The two women are foils for one another. While Lo is honest to a fault, Carrie “has a pretty elastic relationship with the truth” (313). At one point, Carrie highlights their differences when she impersonates Lo: She changes her body and face shape to be rounder and makes her hair shorter to resemble Lo. Increasing their intimate awareness of their physical differences, each of them walks in on the other in the bathtub (Carrie on Lo in Chapter 11, and Lo on Carrie in Chapter 18). They’re also foils in their nicknames, which are from Winnie-the-Pooh: Lo’s is Pooh, and Carrie’s is Tigger.

At first, Lo doesn’t suspect that Carrie was involved in Marcus’s murder. However, she eventually learns the truth: Carrie helped Pieter murder Marcus. When Carrie disappears after the murder, Lo thinks about how Carrie “had been my last-ditch alibi, she had also been my greatest liability. With her gone, I could finally stop worrying about her and start worrying about myself. And my mum” (273). However, Carrie brings out Lo’s maternal instincts.

The last time Carrie and Lo see each other, Carrie has “changed out of her designer wear and was dressed much closer to how she had been when I’d first met her all those years ago—jeans and a faded T-shirt, though this one was Nirvana, not Pink Floyd” (323). Carrie’s appearance returns to resemble how she looked before she killed Richard in The Woman in Cabin 10 and Marcus in The Woman in Suite 11. She reveals that she never regretted helping Lo and that Lo is her best friend. However, Carrie lies to Lo one last time by pretending to turn herself in, when in fact she’s escaping with an accomplice and lover, Filippo. This is a lie Lo approves of at the novel’s end.

Marcus is the billionaire CEO of the Leidmann Group. His grandfather and great uncle founded the company as “Leidmann and Leidmann” (23), and he inherited a fortune, but also made a large amount of money for the company. He’s around 70 and has “a kind of Donald Sutherland quality” (110) to his looks. Marcus is charming, magnetic, and “much more handsome than his son” (110). In addition, he’s obsessed with power, and it corrupts him. Marcus is Carrie’s antagonist: He abuses and imprisons her. Long before meeting Carrie, Marcus was responsible for the death of his wife, Elke. He insisted that she have a second child, despite her doctor’s warning against it; the pregnancy killed both her and the child.

Lo repeatedly thinks about Marcus’s different facets, which include “the monster Carrie had described, the power-hungry business mogul [Lo] had expected, [and] the kindly, cultured man he [tries] to present” (124). He presents himself in various ways, depending on his audience. However, both Carrie and Pieter see the abusive side that Marcus hides from his business associates and the public. Marcus threatens to disinherit Pieter when he defends Carrie against Marcus’s abuse. In the Old Manor hotel, Pieter and Carrie kill Marcus to get revenge for (and freedom from) his abuse.

Marcus’s son, Pieter, is 35, “tall and rather gangly looking” (59), and has “absolutely none of [his father’s] magnetism” (126). Pieter runs the Leidmann Group’s Journeys subdivision, the travel branch of the corporation in charge of the Grand Hotel du Lac. Carrie says that Pieter has been “worshipping his piece-of-shit father in a frankly unhealthy way” (191), but only in terms of business. Pieter admires the business-facing facet of his father. However, he “[stands] up to his father” (334) when he learns that Marcus is abusing Carrie. This causes Marcus to admit to Lo that Pieter’s “succession, that’s undecided” (115), which indicates that Marcus intends to keep Pieter from taking control of the company. Pieter conspires with Carrie to murder Marcus to ensure that Pieter will inherit the family fortune.

Knowing Marcus’s threats about succession, Lo immediately suspects Pieter of Marcus’s murder. He’s her “own pet villain” (307). When Carrie gives Lo a phone with evidence of Pieter’s involvement in Marcus’s murder, Pieter tries to steal it. However, he enters Pam’s house while Lo is still there, instead of when it’s empty, as he planned. Pieter tries to physically prevent Lo from calling the police, but fails. When the authorities are on their way, Pieter dies by suicide, using his gun. He would rather die than be imprisoned.

Lo’s American husband, Judah, writes for The New York Times and fully supports Lo’s going back to work. Judah also supports Lo when she’s arrested, traveling to the UK to be with her. While Judah is exceptionally kind toward his family, he’s skeptical of others. He doesn’t like Carrie; he prioritizes Lo’s safety and doesn’t fully understand her female solidarity with Carrie. He knows Lo is honest and isn’t jealous, even when an incriminating photo of her surfaces.

Judah and Lo’s children are Eli, who’s in kindergarten, and Teddy, who’s in pre-K. They have never seen Lo work, and she hopes to change their ideas about mothers and work by reestablishing herself as a writer. Early in the novel, Lo worries that they’re “getting more American by the day” (13). However, at the end of the novel, she’s more accepting of American life. She becomes comfortable with her American identity partly because her children are American.

Pamela, who goes by Pam and Granny, is Lo’s British mother. She’s self-reliant and bad about answering her phone. After injuring her ankle, she declines Lo’s offer to help; Pam’s “tough, no-nonsense I don’t need coddling attitude [is] probably just [her] way of dealing with her own fear [and] anxiety over what must feel to her like her body’s betrayal […] the classic old-person accident” (234). Pam’s injury shakes her sense of self-reliance. When Lo finally sees Pam, she looks “shockingly old” but is mentally fit.

Inspector Filippo Capaldi from Interpol is a false identity that one of Marcus’s drivers assumes. The novel never reveals his real name. When Lo first sees him at the foraging event, she notices that he has “an Italian accent and [is] extremely handsome […] suave as hell” (106). When she meets him again, she can’t recall where she saw him before. He minimizes his accent so that it’s “very slight.” She still finds him quite attractive. During their interview, he says, “Honesty is always the best policy” (232), and Lo thinks about this comment repeatedly. It’s ironic because he isn’t being honest with Lo about who he is.

When Lo discovers that Filippo isn’t with Interpol, she begins to suspect that he’s “one of Pieter Leidmann’s henchmen” (353). Lo fears that Filippo tricked Carrie into going with him, but he and Carrie are lovers and are working together. Eventually, Lo realizes that Carrie “had sent her lover to ‘interview’ me, to figure out my suspicions and gain my trust” (383). Filippo confirms that Lo isn’t talking about Carrie to the police. When Lo demands that Carrie turn herself in, Carrie “repurpose[s Filippo] as a way out” (383): He’s her escape plan. Carrie and Filippo end up together on a beach at the novel’s end.